Hyperspectral visualization of mass spectrometry imaging data

The acquisition of localized molecular spectra with mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) has a great, but as yet not fully realized, potential for biomedical diagnostics and research. The methodology generates a series of mass spectra from discrete sample locations, which is often analyzed by visually interpreting specifically selected images of individual masses. We developed an intuitive color-coding scheme based on hyperspectral imaging methods to generate a single overview image of this complex data set. The image color-coding is based on spectral characteristics, such that pixels with similar molecular profiles are displayed with similar colors. This visualization strategy was applied to results of principal component analysis, self-organizing maps and t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding. Our approach for MSI data analysis, combining automated data processing, modeling and display, is user-friendly and allows both the spatial and molecular information to be visualized intuitively and effectively.